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Report: Businesss Ethernet Services Grow

Vertical Systems Group: Business Ethernet expands 43% in 2008

BOSTON -- In the midst of a crippling economic downturn in many sectors, U.S. demand for Business Ethernet service ports expanded at a rate of 43% during 2008. Spurred by lower bandwidth costs and higher service availability, enterprises of all sizes purchased carrier-based Ethernet to support their business networking applications, according to Vertical Systems Group's year-end market analysis.

"Despite a near paralysis of new telecom spending at the end of the year, there were tens of thousands of new Business Ethernet service installs during 2008," said Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group. "Deployments were most active in the third quarter before many enterprises implemented spending freezes or staff reductions. Customer installations in the fourth quarter consisted primarily of follow-through on in-process network conversions."